Electronic displays are commonly used to portray data in the forms of visual text and/or other images, so the data may be interpreted and/or acted upon. Typically, the operator of equipment associated with the display will control the equipment based in part on the interpretation of the data displayed. A simple example is an airplane pilot who views a control panel display representing surrounding air traffic, and who then controls the airplane to avoid the traffic.
The displays and their associated bezels (face plates) and frames (interfacing and supporting hardware) are typically built to demanding specifications for durability, reliability, and operating life, due to industry requirements, and the resulting displays have relatively complex electrical, chemical, optical, and physical characteristics. Each particular application, for example, may require specific performance characteristics from the display, such as the ability to accommodate or withstand varying conditions of temperature, humidity, radiation, ambient light, shock, vibration, impact, chemicals, salt spray, water and fluid condensation, immersion, or other environmental, electrical, physical, and/or other conditions. Due to the high costs associated with such varying and demanding specifications, for any particular application it is thus economically necessary for manufacturers to produce a common design in high production volume, resulting in COTS displays all having substantially the same characteristics for a variety of physical sizes. The sizes vary, but the shapes are generally rectangular with an aspect ratio of approximately three to four. Common television and computer displays typically have an aspect ratio of approximately three to four, and are typically square. HDTV displays typically have an aspect ratio of nine to sixteen.
For specialized applications where the market may not be large enough for COTS manufacturers to enter, buyers of displays are required to have displays custom-built to fit their size and shape requirements, at a cost up to ten times greater than the cost of a COTS display having identical functionality. Alternatively, buyers may choose to incorporate a COTS display into an existing control panel or dashboard opening by physically altering the size and/or shape of the control panel opening to match the size and/or shape of the COTS display. For most applications, however, such modifications cannot be made without disturbing the surrounding instruments, controls, and displays already incorporated into the control panel. Such is the case, for example, on an airplane control panel or other vehicle control panel where large numbers of instruments and controls are tightly and efficiently packed into a relatively small area to begin with. And even if the appropriate modifications could be made, they are typically cost-prohibitive.
To overcome the above-referenced drawbacks in the prior art, it would thus be desirable to provide systems and methods for customizing a COTS display to meet the size and shape requirements of a target control panel opening, such that the purchaser of the COTS display may avoid paying the extra costs associated with having a display custom-built from scratch. Such systems and methods would be advantageous for displays that have relatively high tooling costs and relatively low volume production associated therewith.
A particular industry where high-cost custom-built displays are used is the avionics industry, which traditionally used square panel openings to house mechanical control devices. To retrofit airplane control panels with electronic displays, the industry began manufacturing square displays, at a relatively high cost and relatively low volume compared to the COTS non-square displays which are commercially used in a wide variety of applications. In fact, the control panels in newly-built airplanes designed to use electronic displays, are still often made with square panel openings, despite the COTS displays being non-square, in order to maintain the well-established and familiar control panel configurations.
Since a completed electronic display is delicate and relatively complex, most experts in the filed would not expect that customization of the displays as desired could be accomplished by physically cutting an original display, changing its size and/or shape, and resealing it, while maintaining its same basic functionality. For example, most experts would not expect that a display designed to be a four-inch by six-inch display with 480 rows by 640 columns of picture elements (pixels) could be cut down to the size of a four-inch by four-inch display with 480 rows by 480 columns, and still operate successfully.